Plenty of Science and Astronomy, as Well as a Little Bit of Everything Else

Don’t Waste Your Money!

A little confession. I’ve been getting emails from some fairly respected marketers for a while that are promoting actual Get Rich Quick products. I usually just ignore them, but once in a while, I go look at the sales pages to see what’s there. (I recommend looking at as many sales pages as you can to see what works and what doesn’t.)

The sales pages for the Porter Cable 895PK are usually extremely well made and the pitches are seductive to say the least. They hit directly at the emotions without stopping for a moments time at the mind. I’ve secretly thought about buying one or two just to see what was behind the curtain.

Last night, I’m almost ashamed to say, I did. The pitch talked about how all those gurus try to scam you and how they want to keep the real information from you and that he had found the real information and automated it with his own army of programmers from Russia and had built a huge bank of servers, to get it to you, etc., etc.

He talked about a smoke filled room with a bunch of marketers laughing about how they were cheating the little guy with this information, and how he was going to give it to you simply because he wanted to get back at those nasty, cheating baddies! I’m not exaggerating at all.

The product was interesting, had a new way of doing a thing or two, but was absolutely, positively not what had been promoted in the sales page. Luckily it didn’t cost me much.

The main lesson was that I do need to keep away from things that promise all new, what they don’t want you to know, work for ten minutes and go for a walk and when you get back you’ll never have to work again in your life! Products. I had suspected that, but it’s nice to have it confirmed.

When you’re looking at a sales page, pay particular attention to how they describe the product you’ll be purchasing. If they don’t give you any actual details, just a lot of This is brand new and will make you rich, be very, very cautious.

If they have really high quality, almost Hollywood production value video and build promise upon promise for ten or twenty or more minutes without actually telling you anything about the product, be careful.

In the sales video for this product, the fellow (or the voice actor who portrayed him) actually said he was giving the software they developed to you for free, but needed to charge you a $49 fee to help keep up all those expensive servers. This is a very emotionally charged statement, but if your mind stepped in for even a moment, you’d realize it was a load of crap. He’s charging $49 for the product, plain and simple, no matter how he couches it.

It should have been another red flag. There were several, but he spoke so strongly to the emotions, those loud warning signs seemed to be drowned out by, you’ll get rich and get laid! Without any work!!! (No, he didn’t actually promise you great sex.)

I added that for the emotional impact. But he did promise riches and hint that you could retire and spend the rest of your life spending time with your family or traveling the world and never have to work again after one night with this thing.)

I’m not saying a wall mount jewelry armoire is bad, or that a high quality video is suspicious, I’m just saying to pay attention to what they actually say. See if they’re actually giving you some content, if they actually list both the features and the actual benefits (rather than just you’ll be rich and get laid) of their product.

When I write sales copy, I try to speak to the emotions. This is important. I also, though, speak to the mind. I say what the product is, what it includes, how it is to be used, what you should expect from it. I notice that products I have bought and loved do it in a very similar way. They give you details about exactly what you’re buying. They give you the benefits of those details. They speak both to the mind and the emotions.

No matter how caught up in the pitch you become, take a moment to breathe, close your eyes and ask, so what exactly am I plunking down my PayPal info for, here. If you can’t answer that, don’t plunk it down. Unless, of course, you just want to pay for the privilege of peeking behind the curtain once or twice, if only to warn others not to do it.